Two self-taught mining entrepreneurs have made the first big breakthrough in the exploration for diamonds in the Cobalt camp.
Prairie C, a Latchford resource-property development company and Cabo Mining Corp., a Vancouver junior mining company jointly announced in June the discovery of diamonds from a drill program on their Cobalt area property.
"We've had it basically pointed out to us that we've opened up a new area of diamond exploration," says Simon Wareing of Prairie C who together with partner Murray Simpson, have government geologists flocking to their property in Lorrain and South Lorrain township south of Cobalt.
A 9.3 kilogram sample processed from a drill hole contained a total of 95 diamonds, including four macrodiamonds, the largest being a 2.64 milligram white polytetrhedroid.
"The site we're talking about right now, one government geologist said this is like standing on Hemlo at Hole 76," says Wareing, who has hosted about 15 visits to the area by geological groups this summer.
With a zone of occurrence about three kilometres long and a kilometre wide, the rocks being targeted are considered to be a very rare find of xenolith-bearing lamprophyre occurring in a volcanic breccia.
The rocks are very similar in appearance, age and geological setting to the diamond bearing lamprophyres and volcanic breccias under development for diamonds 400 kilometres away, in the Wawa area on the eastern shores of Lake Superior.
"It's a very large structural zone," says Wareing, "which sets it all up very nicely for a very large exploration area for diamonds"
Cabo Mining Corp., which has an option to purchase, is expected to make an announcement shortly on its subsequent exploration plans for the property.
Wareing says their discovery has boosted the spirit of other exploration groups in the area.
"It's excellent news for the whole area, and especially for Cobalt."
Both Wareing and Simpson were unemployed in the mid-1990s when they got the prospecting bug.
"We basically learned from 1996 onward, and this is the project we cut our teeth on," says Wareing.
They began searching for base metals in a known camp near the one-time boom town of Silver Centre, when they stumbled across a heterolithic lamprophyre with diamond fragments during the 2000 exploration season.
A resident geologist confirmed their finding, encouraging them to continue their work "and the rest is history," says Wareing.
Their announcement coincides with the Ontario Geological Survey (OGS) releasing some exciting new targets in early July for diamond exploration in the Mattawa-Cobalt corridor.
The survey technologists had conducted some sampling last year in the Marten River-Temagami area, finding some promising sand grained-sized kimberlite indicator which can host diamonds, including rare G-10 garnets.
They decided to expand their field work ground sampling and mapping of glacial materials to include a corridor extending from Mattawa north to a point just south of Cobalt to fill in some knowledge gaps for exploration purposes, says Ross Kelly, manager of mapping and the geochemistry section in the Sudbury OGS office.
The area of interest is an offshoot of a geological structure running in the bedrock parallel to the Ottawa River known as the Ottawa Bonnechere Grabin, he says.
One arm stretches toward Cobalt with another arm running toward North Bay.
The Cobalt arm is associated with a series of faults in the bedrock known as the Lake Timiskaming structural zone.
"The results we got this year indicated some very good indicator minerals and we plotted them on base maps along with some bedrock geology and started to see some potential targets for further exploration."
Kelly knows of at least half dozen exploration companies in the Cobalt vicinity either conducting preliminary exploration work or beginning to drill actual targets, Prairie C and Cabo being the most advanced.
Falconbridge had previously held some ground in the Cobalt area years ago, Kelly says, "but diamonds didn't have the profile in Ontario 15 to 20 years ago that they do now" especially with a global player such as DeBeers conducting work on the James Bay coast.
"In exploration for diamonds, we're kind of learning as we go," says Kelly, "because the expertise in the province was for gold and base metals. Diamonds were just an interesting sideline. Now we have a better idea of where we should be going to look.
"We're getting better with the survey and what kind of indicator minerals we should be looking for. In the last few years, we've learned quite a lot."
Wareing agrees the base of knowledge on what signs and indicator minerals may host diamonds is getting better all the time.
"Now we're seeing how many more types of rock diamonds can be found in. Cabo's discovery (a volcanic breccia) is something ordinarily that would've been walked over until recently."
